3 ms·

It's similar to the lack of context. For example budget costs without context so people freak out on total dollar spent instead of how it fits in the context o

It's similar to the lack of context. For example budget costs without context so people freak out on total dollar spent instead of how it fits in the context of historical spend. I would argue that time series plots should be given for most large number items so people have contextual history instead of going straight to outrage. Not that there is an incentive for most media organizations to present information in a reasonable way, would lower traffic and engagement.

kevincox 6y ago
This is also similar to providing massive numbers without any context. For example $x produces 2.3M tonnes more $waste than $y every year!!! Of course $y produces 8.2T tonnes a year so it isn't /that much/ of a delta. Also vaguely related to my pet peeve of using large denominators to make numbers large and confusing. This factory produces 63M items a year! How about 2 per second, I can visualize 2.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > Also vaguely related to my pet peeve of using large denominators to make numbers large and confusing. This factory produces 63M items a year! How about 2 per second, I can visualize 2. smaller denominators can also be misleading though. maybe this is just me, but I usually read the denominator as implying a time period over which the figure is stable. for example, before the pandemic, I drove about 40 miles/day. I really did drive 20 miles each way to work pretty much every day. another way of saying this is that I drove 1.6 miles/hour every work day. true on average but kinda misleading when I spent 23 hours out of the day not driving at all. it might not matter much to your example, but the factory probably didn't produce two items every second. there were probably shift changes, or maybe it stopped production for a few hours every night. depending on market conditions, it might have produced more on some days than others, and so forth.
  - kevincox 6y ago
    That is true. There are cases where the timeframe is important, but often it isn't. I definitely should have put "on average" in there. You can also be more clear and say "Produces 5 per second when running at full capacity, averaging 2 per second throughout the year" if that is appropriate for the info you are sharing.
- hinkley 6y ago
  There's a vague prescription in Thinking Fast and Slow that an objective person attempting transparency should present both versions of the numbers. Example: .15% or half a million Americans died. What policy changes if any should we enact to try to compromise between lives lost and GDP, as lower GDP compromises (for instance) our influence in the international community. Versus: Side 1: it was less than one in 800 people. This is hysteria. Side 2: What do you mean hysteria, we lost HALF A MILLION PEOPLE and it could have been 3 million if we had done it your way. Side 1: 1 in 800 is not that many. Side 2: 1 in 800 is a lot, actually.
blululu 6y ago
Ed Tufte pointed out that Japan’s newspapers were far ahead of American media in terms of presenting a large number of meaningful visualizations. He also pointed out that the Communist Party of Japan was the leader amping Japanese media on presenting charts. Needless to say there are important cultural factors at play here.
clairity 6y ago
your solution of time series for context seems like a form of appeal to authority. because it was x last year, x+5% can't be bad! (appealing to the authority of the budget maker in this case) appropriate context would be a breakdown of what x consists of, not just what it was last time period, and how that changed over time. then viewers can decide for themselves what's reasonable as a whole budget based on its parts. appropriate visualizations can provide breakdowns like this without much added complication. but as you noted, letting readers think for themselves is not in the interests of the media, whose power lies in the control they can exert on what we think.

kevincox 6y ago

This is also similar to providing massive numbers without any context. For example $x produces 2.3M tonnes more $waste than $y every year!!! Of course $y produces 8.2T tonnes a year so it isn't /that much/ of a delta. Also vaguely related to my pet peeve of using large denominators to make numbers large and confusing. This factory produces 63M items a year! How about 2 per second, I can visualize 2.

leetcrew 6y ago
> Also vaguely related to my pet peeve of using large denominators to make numbers large and confusing. This factory produces 63M items a year! How about 2 per second, I can visualize 2. smaller denominators can also be misleading though. maybe this is just me, but I usually read the denominator as implying a time period over which the figure is stable. for example, before the pandemic, I drove about 40 miles/day. I really did drive 20 miles each way to work pretty much every day. another way of saying this is that I drove 1.6 miles/hour every work day. true on average but kinda misleading when I spent 23 hours out of the day not driving at all. it might not matter much to your example, but the factory probably didn't produce two items every second. there were probably shift changes, or maybe it stopped production for a few hours every night. depending on market conditions, it might have produced more on some days than others, and so forth.
- kevincox 6y ago
  That is true. There are cases where the timeframe is important, but often it isn't. I definitely should have put "on average" in there. You can also be more clear and say "Produces 5 per second when running at full capacity, averaging 2 per second throughout the year" if that is appropriate for the info you are sharing.
hinkley 6y ago
There's a vague prescription in Thinking Fast and Slow that an objective person attempting transparency should present both versions of the numbers. Example: .15% or half a million Americans died. What policy changes if any should we enact to try to compromise between lives lost and GDP, as lower GDP compromises (for instance) our influence in the international community. Versus: Side 1: it was less than one in 800 people. This is hysteria. Side 2: What do you mean hysteria, we lost HALF A MILLION PEOPLE and it could have been 3 million if we had done it your way. Side 1: 1 in 800 is not that many. Side 2: 1 in 800 is a lot, actually.

blululu 6y ago

Ed Tufte pointed out that Japan’s newspapers were far ahead of American media in terms of presenting a large number of meaningful visualizations. He also pointed out that the Communist Party of Japan was the leader amping Japanese media on presenting charts. Needless to say there are important cultural factors at play here.

clairity 6y ago

your solution of time series for context seems like a form of appeal to authority. because it was x last year, x+5% can't be bad! (appealing to the authority of the budget maker in this case) appropriate context would be a breakdown of what x consists of, not just what it was last time period, and how that changed over time. then viewers can decide for themselves what's reasonable as a whole budget based on its parts. appropriate visualizations can provide breakdowns like this without much added complication. but as you noted, letting readers think for themselves is not in the interests of the media, whose power lies in the control they can exert on what we think.